In A New Form, Broken Form
by SpeakingThroughWrittenWords
Summary: He had been practically begging for them to change him. It had not seemed as bad at the time, because he was certain that he still had some time. But his time ran out. Third Doctor


**In A New Form, Broken Form**

It was only after all of the excitement was over and the Doctor was sitting in his new lab alone, did the gravity of everything hit him.

He was broken. The one fact that he knew to be true, the one thing to hold on to. Found and caught, his own people had broken him. His own memories lost to him, everything familiar stripped away, he could only be a pale shadow of the man he used to be. And it frightened him beyond words to think that he might not know who he was. That he could be someone that he had never wanted to be before. Not that he knew right now, not within a day. Not that it mattered. The thought still frightened him.

There was a mirror against the wall that had not been there this morning. The Doctor had it moved there. Not for narcissistic purposes, but because he knew that sooner or later he would have to get used to this man that he was seeing in the mirror. There was nothing very wrong with him, but it was not him. It was someone else, he was certain. And in all of his life he had never been so completely uncertain about something as he was about this. There was some stranger in the room with him and he could not shake him off of his tracks. He should not even want to. After all, his previous body was quite easy to slide into. Almost a relief, considering how rapidly things had been changing, too quickly for his first self to handle. But now...

It had been his own fault as well. Complaining about how being trapped on Earth in that body would be rather inconvenient. He had been practically begging for them to change him. It had not seemed as bad at the time, because he was certain that he still had some time. But his time ran out on him almost instantly. Now he was here, wondering who the person across the room was.

He had always been somewhat of the same person. Collective memories were what truly made up a person after all, no matter how they decided to deal with things, how one acted. He did not even have those. He had a hole in his mind, just as Jamie and Zoe had. They had forgotten him. He had forgotten everything that made him. Taken from everything that made him. Set aside in one place and one time until life passed him over. The Time Lords were not the forgiving type. And the Doctor was unlikely to be put in a position even to attempt to earn it.

The Tardis sat in the corner where she had been placed, as lifeless as he was. Taken apart to the point that only he would have been able to repair her. But he could not remember. Everything that connected him to him, everything that connected him to her was gone. He could feel her against his mind, but that was it. Nothing to tell him if he was doing the right thing, whether he was getting close to an answer. Had they broken her just as they had broken him? Or was he the faulty link, dragging her down with him because of his own stupidity? He cursed who he used to be with anger. He would never had made that mistake now!

Which was irony in it's greatest form. But at least he had discovered one thing about himself. He was rather defensive, even more then usual.

It was hard to believe that it had only been a day. It felt like years already, years and years of being trapped. Yet the Doctor felt as though if he stepped back one second he could regain everything that he had lost. Become the man he once was. That was foolish thought. Such a thing was not possible. Not that he would have been left to remember it if he was. Time Lords never forgot anything indeed. He used to believe that. Now he was absolutely terrified that he was going to loose something else.

Which might have explained all of the objects he had already accumulated. None of it had been his at first, not until now. The clothing that he wore, taken from some gentleman. This room he was in, given by UNIT as long as he helped them. His assistant, from the moment she helped him he had been unwilling to let her stop. Little objects that he had already taken from the few places he had been so far on this Earth since he had regenerated. The Brigadier had already told him what he would have to return. The Doctor had other ideas. The one thing he had ever really wanted was broken. Now he found his terrified mind grabbing for other things, anything, to fill that hole. Rather illogical, something he found that bothered him more so then it used to. Yet he still was not going to let it go. He _needed_ something. Something that no longer existed for him.

The only thing that distracted his riveted attention was when the clock struck twelve, giving the Doctor a sense of loss again. He had not even been here for twenty four hours. The shadows on the face on the far wall seemed to throw back at the Doctor a haunted look. This man was broken. The Doctor searched himself for some advice but found that he had none of his own to respond with. They were someone else's. Not the Doctor. Unless he was not the Doctor. But he did not want to even think of that. He turned his head from the mirror, knowing full well he would be looking at it the next day, looking for who he used to be in the reflection. Someone who had what really and truly belonged to him. Not stolen belongings, stolen face, stolen memories.

Turning away, he walked back into the Tardis, reaching out with his mind and coming across nothing.

If he had been another man, he would have wept.


End file.
